Monday, August 4, 2014

Back from France - some notes

When I have returned from long vacations I have had trouble writing, so this will be a shallow, digressive post about minor bookish aspects of my trip, designed more to rev up the word-generating machine than to make a point. Why would anyone want to read such a thing? Follow that logic, though, and it’s the end of book blogging; extend the argument a bit more and it’s the death of criticism; then follows literature, the humanities in general, and, finally, civilization. Working backwards, reading this post is a defense of civilization.

In a related attempt to defend civilization, France has a law banning the discounting of books, in effect protecting bookstores and publishers at the expense not just of French Amazon but also many book buyers. One result of the law is more and better bookstores, marvelous bookstores, like Le Bal des Ardents or Librarie Passages in Lyon, the latter recommended to me by Emma of Book around the Corner, or the larger, deeper, crowded Librarie Kleber in Strasbourg.

I emerged from these stores weeping, or saying I was weeping, since I just meant it metaphorically. How I would love to live near such a store. With the books in English, I mean.

New topic. We plan our travel loosely. I knew we would be in Auvergne, the mountainous region in the center of France, but I did not know that we would visit Le Puy-en-Velay. When I began to read The Child by Jules Vallès, the 1878 comic autobiographical novel about the abuse the author received at home and at school, I did not know that it was set in Le Puy-en-Velay. Yet it is, and we in fact did spend a couple of days there, so I found I had directly if inadvertently prepared for my travels.

The town has some distinctive features:

The image is borrowed from Wikipedia. On the left is an 11th, or really 14th, century church topping a pillar of volcanic rock. On the right is the old city and its cathedral, the original starting point for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. In the center is a colossal statue of the Virgin Mary planted on an even taller volcanic pillar. The statue is made of melted Russian cannons. Many of the tourists, including me, clamber up each of the pillars. Many others seem to be happy to see them from below.

Vallès mentions almost nothing distinctive about the town. Streets are steep, and at one point he mentions the unmistakable smell of the mold used by the blue cheese makers. Why doesn’t he mention that giant red statue? Well, it did not appear until 1860, long after Vallès had moved elsewhere. How about that aerial church - it was there? Now I know the answer – he would almost never have seen it from any of his typical vantage points in the dense walled town.

Le Puy-en-Velay comes off well enough in The Child that the town can easily embrace him. Vallès’s misery was not their fault. Signs mentioned him frequently. This square contained the market described in the book; here is the street where he lived and the hospital, previously a church and a revolutionary meeting hall, where he was born. I had not gone looking for Vallès, yet there he was, and there I was, accidentally ready to meet him.

Glad you enjoyed the librairie Passages, I could spend hours there. Friendly libraires (sorry but there's no English equivalent for that word), good choices of books. The librairie Kleber in Strasbourg is a famous one too.

Makes me weep that I've been in Chicago for two days and only came accross one Barnes and Noble café. The real bookstores are hidden in neighborhoods I haven't visited, right?

A need to rev up after a vacance? Au contrare, I find this post fascinating. I love that you were able to visit such a town (and before that such bookstores!). How lovely to find oneself in the same setting one has read about, making our connections all the deeper. Welcome back, Tom, so happy that you were there.

Welcome back. Glad to hear that your French travels were rewarding and that bookstores capable of making one weep still exist. I'm genuinely looking forward to more of your "revving up" in the coming days.

The shiny flip side of not being able to get a discount on that book you want in France is that one can't raise the price either. Other book regulations are specifically intended to keep books democratically affordable and accessible (more or less). As you no doubt saw from those little Folio editions, you can get your hands on some great literature for 2 Euro.

The great Chicago bookstores are in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The Seminary Co-op, along with its sibling 57th Street Books, is one of the world's great bookstores. It serves the University of Chicago population, so it has a great clientele. Powells, not to be confused with the big store on the west coast, is the best used bookstore. Or try Myopic if you're in Wicker Park. I doubt there is anything good left in or near the Loop.

Maybe what I am really doing in the French bookstores is weeping over my move away from the Seminary Co-op. But what is really depressing about a good French bookstore like Passages is that it is not that rare, that there are so many small or medium-sized French bookstores this good, while the US now has so few.

Scott - yes, I finally figured out the dang Folio pricing system. There is one US publisher, Dover, that uses a similar system, publishing many $1 or $2 public domain works, plus lots of inexpensive art books.

A little more Weird France is not a bad idea. My reading has not been too Weird lately. Maybe time to add a little Weird.

I knew I wasn't in the right neighborhood. Too late to visit Seminary Co-op.

Personally, I don't think that fixed prices for books make books more expensive. Anna Edes costs 9,20€ in a French edition and $16 in an American edition. Let's take a popular one like Twilight. It costs $10.99 in paperback and 8.90€ for the French edition. It keeps small bookstores alive; if you see a great book in an indie bookstore, you're not tempted to wait to be at home and order it on the Internet. You will pay the same price anyway.

The Twilight comparison does not work on Amazon, since Amazon is feuding with Twilight's publisher and thus not discounting. BN.com has Twilight at the usual 30% discount for $7.65, or €5.36. Pretty cheap!

The Kosztolanyi book is a good example of how the French law, although is costs most readers money, would help readers like me. I would be surprised and pleased to learn that Anna Edes has sold 2,000 copies, total. It was published, and is kept in print, not for money but for prestige.

Almost every village has its library, so you can always read the Twilight & Da Vinci Code for nothing. Plus, for books like this, you can always find someone to lend you the book. Lots of people exchange books with friends, family and colleagues.

Seen another way : isn't that fantastic that best-sellers sold at a higher price than in the US help financing the publication of other works for readers like us?

I have not been to Seminary Co-op in its fancy knew above-ground digs yet. When I knew it, the store was in a cellar, a maze of books with odd pipes and pieces of equipment everywhere. When you entered, you were immediately confronted by the Wall of Penguins. Sometimes I never got farther than that.

Contact Me

WutheringExpectations@gmail.com

I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day, for the Night cometh wherein no man can work.